Science Indistinguishable from Magic
by Valantha
Summary: One scientist's expansion of the science in the science-fiction of Revolution. Spoilers for 1.13, 1.14, 1.17
1. Chapter 1

Science Indistinguishable from Magic

One scientist's expansion of the Rachel/Aaron exposition scene in 1.13.

- Author's Note: I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit. Spoilers for 1.13

* * *

Rachel was propped up, sitting on a storage box in the rebel base. Across from her, on a cot, sat an astonished Aaron. He sighed, starring at Rachel's notebook, trying to understand the coded scribblings Rachel had been working on since escaping Bass.

Bemused Rachel asked, "Could we give it a rest, Aaron?" She'd been attempting to explain for days.

Aaron said, "Rachel, I have been resting for 15 years."

Rachel, fully understood Aarons feeling of uselessness, and therefore continued her explanation of how she ended the world, "In the beginning, Ben and I had though we had found the holy grail of Material Science; a room temperature superconductor."

Rachel paused for a moment to collect herself. "It had been pure serendipity, baking my freshly ozonated silicon waters in the same oven as a batch of Ben's YBa2Cu3O7 superconductor. When I had pulled the wafers out, I had thought my career was over; they had a graphite-like texture. I went to toss them out, tens of thousands of bucks down the drain. And it wasn't until I noticed that the refrigerator magnets were dancing did I realize that this was special."

"Several months, and many long nights, later we had concluded that yes this new ceramic was a room temp. superconductor." Stated Rachel.

Aaron interrupted, "Truly? A room temp. superconductor? Then why are we in this powerless world instead of one with free electricity, no energy loss from power plan to home, and Mag-Lev-Trains? I mean a room temperature superconductor is right up there with cold fusion, a scientific panacea!"

Rachel gave a wry smile. "I'm getting to that, but first what do you know about superconductors, chemically, I mean."

Aaron took a breath and launched into what sounded an awful lot like a rehearsed lecture, "So normal conductors, metals and the like, have an electronic structure such that they can share electrons easily. Electrons – or holes – can flow along a wire made of a conductor material with a minimum of resistance – like a sidewalk.

"On the flipside, insulators – like rubber – do not have easily accessible excited stated for electrons to go into, so they are like brick-walls for electrons.

"Semi-conductors have a small bandgap. The places where electrons can go are higher energy than a conductor, and lower energy than an insulator. Because of this, and the fact that semi-conductors are only doped with a few extra holes or extra electrons, they serve more like turnstiles. Yes electrons can get through, but it takes more effort than a sidewalk and the throughput is lower."

Rachel nodded in approval at Aaron's simile, he did really understand more about Materials Science than most Comp. Sci. people did.

Aaron continued, "Now superconductors are like moving-sidewalks; easier and faster to move along than normal sidewalks. I don't really understand how it is, but that it what I know."

Rachel grinned at Aaron's sheepishness, "It's okay, I've spent much of my career trying to understand them, and Ben did his graduate work on superconductors, but none of the leading theories is particularly compelling to me; if Ben were around he'd argue about the Meissner effect and Cooper pairs until his was blue …"

Rachel stopped, shook herself and began again. "So, the new ceramic we discovered wasn't in fact a true room temperature superconductor, it's more like a room temperature super-semi-conductor. To continue your analogy, it is as if it oscillates between being a moving sidewalk and a brick wall, or maybe a subway; sometimes you board, and travel very fast and effortlessly, and sometimes you just stand there and wait.

"When we figured out this out, we brought in Dr. Jaffe and Dr. Beaumont and started a little company. We invested everything into this company, our life savings, Charlie's college fund, everything. We imagined getting rich and saving the world. We imagined creating little nanites that would absorb near-UV light and transmit it to electric devises. Just imagine, completely free electricity!"

Rachel got somber, "As you can see, it didn't turn out that way. Making nanoscale structures that absorbed UV light was easy. We used nano-imprint lithography to manufacture the rudimentary computer inside out of normal silicon, and then used electro-deposition to coat the computer with the yttrium-silicon-ceramic."

"Dr. Jaffe worked a miracle and made them self-replicating, but under external control. Getting the nanites to transmit the electricity, that was my job. It proved impossible. The oscillations between superconductor and super-insulator was too erratic, too fast, the "subway" of electrons was just not useable by electronic devises. What they did do well was absorb electricity from these devices."

Rachel sighed, "This is when Ben turned to the D.O.D. I didn't want to give in, but Mr. Flynn had us over a barrel. He brought in a lot of new specialists, weapons guys like Dr. Sanborn. After a few tweaks to the nanites, they grew tendrils an atom wide that were able to by-pass any insulator and completely short-circuit anything – power lines, batteries, generators, anything. They said it would revolutionize war – end the bloodshed in Iraq and elsewhere."

Rachel sat in silent mournful contemplation for several minutes.

Aaron turned back to her rough diagrams of the nanites. "I mean, this is what caused the Blackout? So how many of these things do you think are out there?"

Rachel paused, and estimated based upon the availability of the limiting material, yttrium, "Couple hundred quadrillion, 1X10^26 give or take a few orders of magnitude."

Aaron's eyes boggled. Rachel got up and walked over to some shelving. He said, "It's unbelievable. I mean, this whole time, I just – I thought computers were gone, and it turns out they're everywhere."

Rachel took a small bit of satisfaction from astonishing the great Aaron Pittman and continued, "Each one is the size of a virus – about 300 nm in diameter. They're everywhere. They're in the air, on buildings, you're – we're breathing them in right now."

Aaron, his mind on the tangible, "And they're programmable?"

Rachel clarified, "Two commands: Absorb electricity and replicate."

Aaron was still dumbfounded, "This is – this is so far beyond anything I could have ever imagined was possible."

Rachel grew tired of his hero-worshiping, she felt she only deserved disgust, "We ended the world, Aaron."

Aaron continued, "So they just – they just started reproducing out of control?

Rachel said simply, exhaustedly, "Something went wrong in The Tower. I never did find out what."

* * *

A/N: In lieu of a new Revolution to think about, I tried to make scientific sense of Kripke's explanation for how the power went out. I hope you guys like it, and it's comprehensible. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated :)

A/N 2: Credentials – Masters degree in Biophysics, and summer internship at IBM studying nano-imprint lithography of Si wafers. Not actually a materials scientist.


	2. Chapter 2

- Author's Note: I wasn't planning on continuing this story, but 1.14 had more "science"-fiction that I just needed to logic out, and this was the result.

Special thanks to xyber116 for beta'ing this technobabble-y chapter.

I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit. Spoilers for 1.13 and 1.14

* * *

Beth Warren had insisted that Aaron and Rachel spend the night before continuing their journey to 'finish some business in Colorado.' Rachel was relieved; this would give her a chance to search Jane's house for some vital information about how to shut down The Tower.

Beth settled Aaron and Rachel into the guest bedroom and said good night. Dr. Jane Warren didn't want anything to do with her guests, and was nowhere to be found. Rachel was wondering how long she should wait before beginning to search for Jane's notes – for any self-respecting science would keep a lab notebook – when Aaron interrupted her thoughts.

"Do you know what happened to those militiamen; how they got magically charred?" he asked.

Rachel tried to ignore the question, and sat down upon the queen-sized bed, but Aaron insisted, "You must know! You didn't look nearly as surprised as you should. Those men burnt up from the inside, and you barely blinked."

Rachel sighed, and asked Aaron, "What do you know about microwaves?"

Aaron, taken aback by the implications of the question, stuttered a bit before straightening up and launching into an Aaron Pittman lecture (patent pending), "Microwaves are a class of electromagnetic radiation, like ultraviolet light or gamma rays. They are longer and have less energy than ultraviolet, visible, or infrared light, but are shorter and more energetic than radio waves. Microwave ovens used to use light of this length to excite water in food. The radiation would cause the water to 'dance,' which would cause the rest of the molecules in the food to heat up by friction."

Rachel smiled at the lecture, started unzipping her boots, and began her explanation, "When I said I couldn't get the nanites to transmit energy, that wasn't completely true. I could get them to transmit incoherent – unfocused – microwave radiation. Enough to fry someone from inside out –"

Aaron interrupted, "Like before." Then he sat down on a wooden chair in the corner of the guest bedroom.

Rachel continued, "Yes, like before; but it wasn't coherent enough to power any devices. Dr. Jane Warren was working on using pinpoint microwave lasers – or masers – to irradiate and kill cancer tumors, a fairly ambitious project at Johns Hopkins University, when Randall brought her in.

"But even she couldn't directly solve the coherence issue. However, she did figure out how to 'tune' the nanites to exactly the right wavelength to excite water – 112 millimeters. She even determined a way to transmit a programing signal in a directional beam to get the nanites to transmit the radiation –"

"Like the microwave ray gun?" Queried Aaron.

"Exactly," answered Rachel, tossing her boots to the floor, before continuing, "But even that little 'microwave ray gun' she used earlier was _nothing _compared to her masterwork."

Rachel curled her legs up under her chin and took a breath, "Dr. Warren figured out a way to instruct nanites in a limited area to microwave foreign bodies. In her wife Beth's case, she programed the nanites to heat up and kill cells with abnormal cell-membrane markers, typical of her metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma – liver cancer. I don't really understand whick markers the nanites were programed to look for, or how the nanites actually recognize them, but Jane always explained it to me as a way to turn the nanites into little killer T-cells."

Aaron interrupted to ask, "Killer T-cells?"

"Well, cell biology is not my forte, but killer T-cells are part of the body's natural immune system. They look at the markers on the outside of cells for signs of trouble. If the killer T-cell detects a marker indicative of a virus infection they pop the infected cell open. Killer T-cells also look for cancer cells – a by-product of the process of becoming cancerous usually includes changes to the outer membrane markers. Different kinds of cancers change the cell-membrane markers in different ways, and the same cancer in different people can have different abnormal cell-membrane markers. Jane also said the nanites would have never worked with a cancer that changed its cell-membrane markers upon metastasis, like many kinds of breast cancer."

Rachel took a pause to decide if she should mention Danny and the capsule designed to reprogram nanites to help his condition, but decided that Aaron had enough to think of for right now. "Anyways, the microwave radiation function of these nanites has kept Beth Warren alive these past 16 years. You can understand why Jane is more than a little annoyed with us for asking for her help to get to The Tower and shut them down."

Aaron nodded understandingly. Rachel added, trying to fluster and divert Aaron from asking any more difficult-to-answer questions, "What do you want to do about the bed situation?"

It worked – Aaron was flustered and tried to work out an equitable sharing of the bed. Rachel was faintly amused; little did he know, but she had gone through things much, much, worse – orders of magnitude worse – than simply sharing a bed with a benevolent, non-threatening, friend.

* * *

I guess I will continue trying to make scientific sense of Kripke's explanations for how the power went out, and if the writers ever explain Danny's condition, I'll try to logic that out too. I hope the writers don't turn the nanites into little panaceas, but we will see.

I hope you guys like it, and it is comprehensible. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated, heck even non-constructive criticism would be okay.


	3. Chapter 3

- Author's Note: I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit. Spoilers for 1.17. T for language.

* * *

Rachel shook in the morning air, attempting to block the pain of her broken leg, the fear of infection, the fear of thrombosis. She wasn't a medical doctor, and her first aid knowledge of R.I.C.E. didn't really apply to wounds of this magnitude.

Aaron asked, "Seriously, why the hell am I in this book?"

Rachel curtly replied, "This is why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd obsess about it."

Aaron retorted, "Yes. No. I'm sorry for overreacting."

Rachel suppressed a sigh, "I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. I'll tell you one thing. I think Ben knew… something."

Rachel shrugged her shoulders non-committally.

Aaron asked, "What do you mean?"

Rachel explained, "As soon as we met you, he kept you close. No matter where we moved, what we did, you were with him. He could have given that pendant to anyone, and he chose you."

Aaron looked a little hurt. Clearly, he had thought Ben and he were friends, and it hurt his feelings that his friend was so Machiavellian. Well, Rachel really didn't have the energy to give a damn about his hurt feelings.

Aaron shook his head and said, "This is just creeping me out. Let's just get going." He packed Dr. Warren's journal in his bag.

Rachel retorted, "How am I supposed to do that?" Yes, they had the horses they stole from the men she had killed, but even with them, traveling was excruciatingly painful. Each hoof-beat sent slivers of bone grating against muscle and sinew.

Aaron replied patiently, "Oh, come on. I don't want to hear it." And he bent down to pick her up.

Rachel, whose wound had clotted and frozen in place, said, "No. Aaron."

Aaron strained to pick Rachel up, huffing, "Wait."

Rachel cried in suppressed pain, "Aaron. Aaron! Ow! Aah!" She grunted in distress and gripped Aaron's jacket in a death-hold. She strained to breathe through the pain, like childbirth. But in this case the pain wouldn't end in a beautiful baby boy or lively baby girl, but a prolonged painful death by sepsis, or if she was lucky, a fast death by a clot from the wound reaching her heart or brain.

_Childbirth. _That gave her an idea. Rachel hardly even heard Aaron's apology – her mind was racing a-mile-a-minute, attempting to logic out the possibility.

Rachel asked Aaron, double-checking what she thought he would say, "You really aren't gonna leave me, are you?"

Rachel glanced up at Aaron; he stood resolute, and said, "No. I'm really not."

_Why was it that some men turned tail as soon as the going got rough and others stood the course, and neither was who you'd think._

Rachel made up her mind, if he wasn't going to continue her mission without her, she would have to attempt this foolhardy experiment in order to survive.

"Hand me my pack." She commanded.

Aaron acquiesced, and Rachel dug around in it to pull out Danny's capsule. She said, "I have an idea. Something that might fix my leg."

Aaron asked, "Why didn't you say something before?"

Rachel snapped at him, "Because it probably won't work and it will probably get us both killed. But you are so stupid and stubborn that you won't leave, so…" Rachel pulled out Danny's capsule and looked at the small thing that had kept her son alive.

Rachel continued. "There might be a way."

Aaron was confused and asked, "How?"

Rachel handed him the precious capsule, elaborating, "With this."

Aaron examined the capsule; he recognized the circuitry but not the pill-like design, "Huh?"

Rachel curtly said, "Well come along then. We'll need some supplies so let's give this horse-back riding thing another try."

Aaron eventually lifted Rachel onto the back of one of their stolen horses and they rode along the highway looking for an electronics store. Rachel had almost passed out from the pain of the transfer, and her wound began bleeding again, the clot broken. Riding on the highway was easier on her – fewer detours for the horses – but the ride was still far from smooth. Her wound began bleeding again, and she thought she might be going into shock, the whole world fuzzed out and then snapped back into sharp relief. It might be easier if she just passed peacefully from shock to death and let Aaron continue on without her, but her need for revenge drove her to fight off the comfort of unconsciousness.

At around noon they found a podunk electronics store and Aaron carried her inside. She instructed him to hand her Dr. Warren's journal, no lab notebook, no magic spell book. She opened it up and looked around for the circuit diagram Jane had drawn depicting a nanite controller re-programming device.

"Build that," she commanded pointing at the complex diagram.

Aaron asked her, "What is it?

Rachel replied shortly, mincing the words through her pain-fog, "Just build it okay! It'll reprogram the capsule."

Aaron was more confused rather than less, but began looking for the correct components to build the diagramed device. It had been a long time since he played around with circuit diagrams and motherboards, but hey, soldering was just like riding a bike, right?

As Aaron was searching for the required resistors, capacitors, and transformers, Rachel fought to control her pain. _She had experienced much worse at Sergeant Strausser's hand without breaking_, or at least that was what she tried to tell herself.

Rachel unwrapped the ace bandage and then steeled herself for examining the wound. She knew it was bad, as compound fractures were always much worse than closed fractures. Rachel was no medical doctor but she knew that compound fractures had infinitely higher risks of infection as well as an increased risk for thrombosis.

Rachel tore off the gauze – disrupting the clot that had formed and looked at her shattered leg bone, she didn't remember if it was the tibia or fibula, but she could certainly see it, whichever it was. The flesh around the wound was not yet inflamed, and she wasn't feverish yet, both good signs that the wound wasn't infected **yet**.

She looked up at Aaron, hopefully he could pull this off; otherwise she was toast. Rachel figured that some ego-stroking wouldn't be amiss and said, "Pretty impressive, Aaron."

Aaron dismissed the complement with, "Well, other kids played sports. Of course, I have no idea what I'm building."

Rachel attempted to explain, but the pain-fog made it difficult to clearly explain everything, "The capsule is first-generation nanotech." What she really meant to say was that it was a first-gen nanite controller. It itself wasn't nano-sized – clearly.

Rachel continued, "It kept Danny alive. Fixed his lung tissue." At least that was the simple explanation that Dr. Warren had given her sixteen years ago. From decoding her lab notebook, Rachel had learned a lot more about what the nanites could do biologically.

Apparently the silicon ceramic the nanites were made out of, made them sensitive to pH and oxidation differences. They could figuratively sniff out cancer tumors by detecting their acidic and low oxygen surroundings.

In Danny, the nanites removed the harmful scar tissue in his lungs and somehow triggered normal healthy tissue growth. Rachel couldn't quite understand how the capsule could tell the nanites to form the correct surface structures to convey the growth message, but they could. These two things would have made the capsule a one-and-done procedure, but Danny had had other issues besides just scarred and weak lungs that required regular maintenance.

Due to his arterial defect, he had experienced _in utero_ oxygen depravation. The clinical trial to ameliorate the effects had helped somewhat, but he was still born premature with under-developed lungs and some mild brain damage. His under-developed lungs were scarred by the NICU's oxygen tubing, and the mild brain damage had lead to delayed language acquisition.

Rachel had been concerned when he didn't start babbling around six months, but knew she had to do something when her two-year-old had never once called her 'mama.' Dr. Warren had deftly programmed Danny's capsule to trigger subtle brain tissue growth and differentiation. The first time Danny had called her 'mama,' Rachel knew the whole Blackout was worth it.

Rachel returned to the present, "Umm… you can reprogram it to do almost anything – stitch bone, heal skin – like fix my leg, if it works."

Aaron asked the smart question, "And if it doesn't?"

Rachel tried scaring him off with the worst-case scenarios; she said, "Mm, could cook us from the inside or… ignite the air." The nanites guarding the Tower were programed to do just that if they detected any unauthorized personnel.

It was far more likely that nothing would change, or maybe they would heal the small bit of scar damage in her lungs from the summer she had spent in Turkey and had taken up smoking. Rachel continued, "hard to say."

Aaron wasn't easily scared and nodded resolutely, simply grunting "Uh-huh."

Aaron worked on building the device depicted in the diagram; he had difficulty finding a way to solder the breadboard together, but jerry-rigged a soldering iron with a bit of heated copper wire with electrical tape wrapped around one end as a handle.

When Aaron had finished constructing the nanite controller re-programming device he turned to Rachel, "Now what?"

Rachel looked up at him and said, "Just plug the capsule in."

Aaron asked the obvious question, "How do we power it?"

Rachel suppressed a sigh and said, "Just plug it in. You'll see."

Rachel watched Aaron plug the capsule into the receptor and the old Macintosh monitor sprang to life.

Aaron exclaimed, "Wow."

Rachel smiled at his child-like wonder, "Yeah."

Rachel told him, "Just flip a few pages, there should be some code. Input it."

Aaron asked, "What does this mean?"

Rachel sighed and said, "It'll re-program the controller to tell the nanites to 'Heal all the Things'"

Aaron smiled at the re-appropriated meme, and Rachel thought it was a simplistic but true explanation of what the code would do. Dr. Warren had designed this wound healing short-cut. The program would tell the nanites to locate cells sending out damage signals – such as histamine or activated clotting factor XII – in a high-oxygen environment and form a scaffold for wound closure. In addition, the nanites would trigger cell growth.

Aaron turned around and asked, "The program is asking for a stimulation value?"

Rachel pondered a brief moment before she replied, "Input 1." That was the maximum stimulation value. The nanites would trigger very fast cell growth. It would be painful as fuck, but if this leg wasn't healed within a few days, they would be dead-meat. Danny's lung healing had occurred with a stimulation value of 0.1, but even then her precious baby boy had been in pain.

As Aaron was inputting the rest of the code for the healing short-cut, Rachel thought she heard something. She looked around and decided she must be hallucinating – a symptom of shock, this better work one-way or the other. A fast death would be better than an agonizingly slow one.

Aaron unplugged the capsule, reprograming complete. He turned and looked at Rachel and said, "Okay."

Rachel readjusted her position, keeping the wound elevated but allowing for easier access, she grunted in pain.

Aaron attempted to sooth her with a, "Shh, shh, shh. Okay."

Rachel grabbed onto the shelving above her, gripping hard in anticipation of a great deal of pain. Even if it didn't work, shoving the large pill of a capsule into the wound would be painful.

Aaron hesitated, asking, "Do you really think we'll explode?"

Rachel commanded, "Just do it, Aaron."

Aaron murmured, "Okay." He shoved the capsule into the open fracture wound.

Rachel groaned, the insertion of the capsule was more painful than she had imagined it would be especially when it grated against the bone slivers, but soon even that pain was eclipsed. Rachel cried out in agony.

In the distance, far from the whirling cyclone of torment she existed in, Rachel heard Aaron ask, "What did I do wrong?"

The indescribable pain of the nanites forming a scaffold and triggering tissue growth was then overshadowed by the torment of bone knitting together. An eternity later the pain lessened and Rachel looked down at her healed leg. It had been a million times more painful than she had expected, as well as ten thousand times faster than she had expected. She didn't think tissue **could** grow that fast, even if it had been given the proper signals.

Rachel hugged Aaron in relief. She wasn't going to die. She would be able to live to see Monroe pay for what he had done to her baby boy, her husband, herself.

Her brief moment of happy reflection was interrupted by the sound of a gun cocking and she looked up to see a man of the Plains Nation holding a rifle in his hands. He asked, "What the hell was that? That's impossible. How'd you do that?"

Aaron attempted to explain the inexplicable, "Just – just take it easy…"

The man interrupted, "You're coming with us."

Aaron continued, "Now hold on a sec…"

The man reiterated, "You're coming with us! Now."

* * *

- Author's Note: I guess I will continue trying to make scientific sense of Kripke's explanations for how the power went out and the nanites.

I hope you guys like it, and it is comprehensible. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.


End file.
